Fusca says Stornoway’s diginets in for long haul

Stornoway Communications president and CEO Martha Fusca says the company is "absolutely" in for the long haul with its three diginets: the public affairs i channel, the dance channel bpm:tv, and the short film channel Movieola. Last week, Stornoway laid off 28 of its 55 employees, and cancelled i channel’s flagship program Unzipped, which was hosted by federal Progressive Conservative party leader Joe Clark’s daughter, Catherine. Most of the employees let go worked on the production of programming. "What we’ve decided is that we’re going to reconfigure the way that we produce programming," Fusca tells CCR. "We were producing an awful lot in-house across all three channels. It’ll (now) be more in the co-production area, so that we’ll provide staff and facilities, and we’ll work with the independents." The restructuring – the first by a digital specialty broadcaster to come out publicly – was necessitated by slow growth in subscriber revenue and a downturn in the advertising market, according to Fusca. "The early numbers (of subscribers opting for the channels after the free preview ended in January) were disappointing," says Fusca. "But I think with the latest figures from last week, we’re seeing the growth happening, so there is a lot of room for encouragement." However, at least one major digital distributor is telling a different story. Shaw Communications Inc. president Peter Bissonnette says i channel’s numbers on Shaw spell disaster for the service. Shaw distributes i channel, a must-carry Category 1, but not bpm:tv or Movieola. Bissonnette says only 1,600 of Shaw’s 410,000 digital subscribers are subscribing to Stornoway’s i channel. As well, most of those subscribers did not choose the channel per se but are receiving it through an all-inclusive package. "They are not going to make it on our subscriptions, I can tell you that," Bissonnette tells CCR. "Unless they have really deep pockets, it’s going to be hard to attract advertisers to that kind of subscription base. That is going to be their challenge. (Learning and Skills Television of Alberta Limited’s) Book (Television) is the same way, and (Vision TV’s) One (the Body, Mind & Spirit Channel) is another one, and (CHUM’s) Fashion (Television)…they are all languishing would be the good word for it." Fusca downplays the recent changes: "I find it (the media coverage) a bit surprising, actually. I didn’t know that it was going to be that newsworthy. I mean when you change the way you do production, I didn’t know that warranted a press release." According to its licence application, Stornoway had in excess of $38 million in funding. Getting its broadcast centre up-and-running cost between $4 million and $6 million, including construction, technical equipment, and wiring, according to Stuart Turner, VP of operations and technical planning at Stornoway. Add to that staff and production costs during the first four months the channels were operating, and the company could easily have eaten up half of the $38 million at its disposal.

Fusca says Stornoway’s diginets in for long haul

News | 02/15/2002 5:00 am EST

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